Disclaimer: Samus Aran belongs to NinTenDo. Master Chief and the other thirty two Spartans belong to Bungie.

"Samus! Paul! Are you..?" Nicole was waiting for them on the other side of the lock.

"I'm fine, I don't know about zero six three, though. Check him while I make sure she's alright." Samus told her before taking the girl-objective through to lay her on the bed. Nicole did as suggested, and at first she couldn't find anything wrong with the Mk-VI clad Spartan, but then she found the hole. Driven neatly through the weak-point at the back of his neck, the weaker shields on the newer armour must have failed during the running battle on the way back to Samus' ship. Nicole felt a pang of regret when she realised that another of her family was dead. ONI would need to be notified, even if there were no gravestones for the immortal Spartans. While Samus dealt with her girl-child, she reckoned she had enough time to say goodbye.

Much as Samus had helped her, she set to work removing his armour. Each piece of the nearly intact Mjolnir suit was piled neatly just inside the ship, until Paul lay there in just his under suit. He looked so old, she mused. Where her own temporal adventure had shaved ten years off her age - her return had been delayed far longer than she'd experienced in subjective time - 063 had lived through each of the forty three years of his violent life. His once blonde hair was shot through with grey, and his almost cherubic face was lined with stress. The wound that killed him was entry only, so that from the front it looked like he was merely sleeping. Whispering a goodbye, 458 closed his eyes while drawing her hand, index and middle fingers extended, across her face in the sign language for 'smile' that the Spartan-IIs had adopted as their private greeting.

"He didn't make it?" Samus' voice, soft, from the entrance.

"Some kind of needle weapon." Nicole's voice was tight with suppressed emotion. She hadn't even known Paul had been on the planet, and now he was dead in front of her. "I'll have to tell ONI, even if no-one else ever finds out."

"I'm sorry." Samus said, moving forward. "I had a brother, too. The pirates killed him when I was five," she paused. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Take us up, into space. I'll send him into the stars, a proper Marine's burial." She paused to get her cracking voice under control. It hurt, much more than she was letting on, but she'd been trained to hold it a inside, to show no weakness that might demoralise the rest of the troops.

"Aright. Do you mind if I'm there? I owe him. If you wanted it to be a private thing, I understand, but..."

"No, I'd like it if you were there. I think he would, too." Nicole nodded "I need to post my report to ONI, I can't put it off any longer"

"Go on, then. There's a terminal in my cabin, you can use that. I'll take you to wherever their HQ us when we've seen Paul off?"

Nicole nodded wordlessly by way of reply before going through to write her report.